Showcasing Music Till the Sun Comes Up

Primavera Sound Sets the Stage for Music Festivals Worldwide

Slide Show|12 Photos

Primavera Sound

Primavera Sound

CreditStefano Buonamici for The New York Times

BARCELONA, Spain — Caetano Veloso, the bossa nova elder statesman, was holding court here on Saturday evening, floating his baritone voice and easy guitar over an amphitheater audience that swayed and sang along as he offered a slightly raunchy paean to his native Brazilian sounds.

A few dozen feet away, on another stage, Earl Sweatshirt, the young California rapper and member of the Odd Future hip-hop clan, was doing his own conducting. “Make some noise,” he instructed his audience, growling, “if you’re ready to go to hell for, like, three minutes.” The polyglot crowd spit back his rhymes, profanities included, with enthusiasm.

It was the final big night of Primavera Sound, an expansive music showcase here that has gradually become one of the top tickets of the European festival season and a template for promoters worldwide. Its 14th edition began in earnest on Wednesday at the Parc del Fòrum, a seaside complex, and ended with a trickle of free shows on Sunday at the Parc de la Ciutadella. In between, some 50,000 people a day saw nearly 300 acts — electronica to soul to postpunk — in concerts that stretched from afternoon to sunrise. The international lineup featured arena stars like Nine Inch Nails and up-and-comers like FKA Twigs on a dozen stages. The audience traveled from across Europe and, increasingly, North America. Walking through the grounds was a mini-United Nations of fandom, reflecting a global music industry and an orderly Euro youth culture, an acknowledgment that taste can translate across borders.

The festival is sometimes called the Coachella of Europe, a nickname it has earned, with some caveats, said Martin Mills, the founder and chairman of the Beggars Group, a roster of international record labels. “This doesn’t have the pretensions, if you like, of Coachella,” Mr. Mills said of that springtime festival in Indio, Calif., known as much for celebrity spotting and minting fashion and marketing trends as for its musical coups. Mr. Mills, whose independent labels represent acts like Vampire Weekend and the National, was attending Primavera for the third time, catching up with his own bands and others. “Next year, I’ll be coming again,” he said on Saturday. “It feels like a very real music place here, and it’s also a place that artists like to come to as fans.”

Or as Win Butler, the Arcade Fire frontman, put it, “We had a really magical experience here.” He was backstage, after the group’s headlining show on Thursday, when he bid the crowd good night and good morning sometime after 2 a.m., when the confetti cannons went off. The festival has “the same vibe as the city,” he said. “That’s hard to pull off.”

Kyoko Minegishi, 31, a festival regular who came from Salzburg, Austria, and was feverishly bouncing along to Kendrick Lamar’s set on Saturday night, compared Primavera favorably with other outdoor concerts. “It’s all about the open air until 6 a.m.,” she said.

Outside the festival gates, though, this city was roiled by demonstrations last week, as Spaniards protested the government’s attempt to take over an abandoned warehouse that was long home to squatters. The uprisings were seen as emblems of the social unease and economic instability here, where unemployment remains high even as Barcelona experiences a record surge in tourism.

Though Primavera was calm, the tension was on the mind of locals, said Jofre Font, a television journalist and cultural commentator from Barcelona who attended both the protests and the festival. There was little contradiction, he added, between the action across town and the musical sensibility of the festival. Nine Inch Nails, he said, “could be the soundtrack for the protests.”

But ticket prices, up to 195 euros, or about $265 for a three-day pass, are not quite squatter friendly. “This festival is possible because all these foreign people come,” said Mr. Font, 36, who has attended since its first year.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

About 40 percent of the attendees are from abroad, said Pablo Soler, a founder and director of the festival, which also offers free park shows and other programming for the city.

Fifteen years in, Coachella is host to two consecutive sold-out weekends, for nearly 100,000 people. (Passes are $375.) As Primavera approaches its 15th anniversary next year, its organizers hope to build its international appeal, promoting it in the United States for the first time, alongside efforts in Germany, France and Scandinavia, while still managing its growth. A satellite festival, introduced in 2012, runs Thursday through Saturday in Porto, Portugal. There is also PrimaveraPro, a music conference.

“Of course, bigger is better — supposedly, allegedly,” Mr. Soler said in an interview on Friday. “But we’re good. We’re not the biggest festival, and we don’t intend to be the biggest festival.”

The mystique of Primavera has expanded alongside its scale and booking prowess, which started with small clubs and European acts. A turning point came in 2009, when Neil Young headlined, said Fra Soler, the festival’s chief booker (and no relation to Pablo Soler). Now the festival has a reputation for scouting bands early — the future dance-punk stars LCD Soundsystem performed on the strength of a few singles — and cajoling reunion gigs out of seminal retirees like Pulp, Slowdive and the Pixies. It’s “one of those shows that reminds us why we love playing live,” said David Lovering, the Pixies drummer.

Spanish artists still round out the festival, and smaller stages, arranged with music industry partners like ATP, Vice and Pitchfork, brim with popular American and British acts. “My first foreign rapper performance!” Niklavs Sekacs, 20, an electronica musician from Latvia, said after Mr. Lamar’s set. On Friday, it was a short stroll from FKA Twigs, an English R&B singer, to Furia, a shirtless Polish black metal band, to the Pixies, the American alt-rockers.

“Year after year, their booking blows me away,” said Lauren Beck, the director of music programming for the Northside Festival in Brooklyn. “It’s probably the only festival where you’re going to see Slint, Slowdive, Speedy Ortiz and Spoon listed next to each other on posters,” she added in an email.

In a display of egalitarianism, Primavera lists artists alphabetically, rather than headliner-first. Organizers also take care not to overcrowd spaces and are sure to indulge their performers with a choice of equipment and snacks. Wine is served in real glasses.

It’s “a relative sanctuary for music fans,” said Chris Kaskie, president of Pitchfork, whose festivals in Chicago and Paris were partly modeled on the rarefied Primavera experience. “The fact that you get to do that while on the Mediterranean, well, game over.”

Correction: June 4, 2014
An earlier version of this article misstated the year Neil Young headlined the festival. It was 2009, not 2005.

A version of this article appears in print on June 2, 2014, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Showcasing Music Till the Sun Comes Up. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe